Andy_Panthro said,

The constant increase in quantity and quality of indie games means the death of the high street PC gaming market matters very little.

I’ve played more hours of games from smaller publishers and indie developers this past two years than I have from large publishers, and I see that trend continuing.

The main issue with the loss of the high street is distribution. Internet services are not quite in place everywhere, but they are growing each year. Two things stand in the way – infrastructure and law.

Even in the UK, internet access is in an awkward position. Inner cities have generally got good access, whilst rural areas are poorly served due to infrastructure costs. From that perspective, an increase in the speed and availability of mobile internet will help things enormously.

The issue with law is the conflict between local and international laws, and that raises other problems. Despite the perceived international nature of the internet, it is often regionally restricted for various reasons. Digital distribution is no exception, and although places like Good Old Games provide the same service around the world, other places alter pricing or availability by geography. Of course this is often related to the boxed copies sold (or not) in the respective countries (Such as Austrailia and The Witcher 2, for example).

Thankfully indie games often counter both points – firstly many are smaller in size so that even a meagre internet connection can download them, but also they are far less likely to have regional restrictions imposed upon them.

Calibrator said,

Andy, in Germany it’s the very same story: People living in rural areas often have no DSL connection, sitting at 56Kbit or ISDN (64Kbit). These folks could mail order stuff of course and we’ll see how long this will be an option. Alas, if you order a game that is rated “18” (“mature” for US readers) then you have to pay extra for the postman checking the age of the receiver (you!). This makes games often more expensive than in retail stores…

Apropos retail stores: Yesterday, I was in our local “Media Market” subsidary and because of the recent discussions here I checked the games department more thoroughly. I have to confess that I buy most mainstream games boxes online, too, or wait until the games are offered on magazine cover disks.

What I noticed was this:
PC games are already under-represented, compared to the various console games. I’d estimate that there were only half as much stuff as nine years ago.
Add to this that it now is located in the shabbiest corner of the store, with two half shelves (one with new stuff, the whole second half with budget software like Ponyfarm and all those “Spot the…”-games.
The space that got freed by shrinking the PC section was clearly devoted to consoles and mobile consoles (=Nintendo DS and 3DS) and for several stacks of special games console sales (console bundled with a game, console bundled with plastic guitar, …bundled with Kinect or Move etc.).

In the PS3 and X360 section I also noticed that they alotted one entire slot per game (=five boxes of the same game in one slot, for example), whereas in the PC section most games were sorted like CDs or DVDs, in sequential order.
This means that if you were searching for a console game you could simply wander down the aisles and keep looking at the shelf. For PC games you have to search with your fingers and there is often only one box for a given game. This is complicated by the various sections (action, adventure, RPG – now where to find this new action-adventure? hmmm). Obviously you have a harder time, finding the PC game you want (except it is very new which brings it to the front).
It’s as if the store owners think that console gamers are either too impatient or too dumb to find what they want.
It also obviously means that console games are indeed *physically* shallow… 😉

The market is of course not punishing PC gamers with this small section – they only react to what the audience votes with their wallets.
Therefore I don’t think that PC games vanishing into cyberspace is not an “if”- but a “when”-question.

Ah, and don’t worry about the stores: I also noticed that their hifi section is shrunk in about half, too, given that most people seem to be content with their iPods and several mini amplifier/speaker options.
What got into that space? “White wares”, which means kitchen appliances in Germany.
Interesting product development in a “media market”, for sure…

Rampant Coyote said,

Yeah, this is the case in the U.S. (at least in my area) as well. Once upon a time, many years ago, I remember Electronics Boutique at the mall being almost all PC games. What wasn’t PC games was other PC software. You’d go to a toy store or department store for console “cartridges.”

Nowadays – PC games are the ghetto in brick-and-mortar game stores. I’m trying to remember the last time I bought a PC game from a local store – I think it was at a going-out-of-business sale for Circuit City.

I gave up trying to buy PC games in stores a few years ago after attempting to buy… what was it? Oh, I was looking for the newly-released IL-2: 1946. Nobody had it, even after it had been out a week. I was in one game store, and found that their entire PC game selection consisted of about a dozen titles on a little section of wall next to the cashiers. There was a bigger section for used games for an obsolete console than for the PC! I finally bought a physical copy online, and gave up going to the stores to look for PC games.

skavenhorde said,

I buy constantly from brick and mortor shops because I like the person who works there. She gives me a discount and it is always a little cheaper to buy games here in Taiwanese Dollars than it is if I bought online. I don’t see Taiwan’s Brick and Mortor shops disappearing completely any time soon. We are a little slow with changes around here and a little stubborn to the type of media that Taiwanese want.

We’ll see though. Maybe in about 5 years or so this might change. It would be a sad day since one of the only reasons I head back to Taipei is to go and visit my fovorite shop.

Rampant Coyote said,

See the above comment about “The Steam Hegemony.”

The majority of the digital games I purchase do NOT have anything like Steams DRM / Cloud Save system / whatever to go wrong. Indie games, games on GOG.COM – and (at least for now) the games I bought on Impulse — it’s no problem.

Thanks, Steam, for giving digital downloads a bad name…

(Okay, yes, Steam’s probably done more to popularize digital game distribution than anybody else, too, I just don’t want them to monopolize things.)

Tesh said,

I detest it when a game platform requires I dial the mothership to play a game that has no online component. That’s why I’m always happier to get a game via GoG.com than nearly any other online vendor.

Still, Steam sales for $5 and a mostly-working “offline mode” means I can try out games I’d not otherwise bother with. Impulse works pretty well, too. For that price point, I can live with a little inconvenience when my internet goes down. I have other games to play.